Mazda Motors withdraws from carsharing cooperation in Germany

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Nuremberg, August 21st, 2019 | Mazda withdraws from the carsharing business. The Japanese manufacturer is leaving the cooperation with Deutsche Bahn, Lidl and the mobility service provider Choice, which started in 2018. A total of 850 vehicles from Mazda have been available for booking through either the Mazda Carsharing app or the Flinkster App of Deutsche Bahn. With more than 4.000 vehicles, Flinkster is Germany’s largest provider of stationary carsharing. In order to provide the vehicles in attractive locations for the customers, the food retailer Lidl held customer parking spaces exclusively for the carsharing vehicles. After their maximum operational time of twelve months, the initially deployed 850 vehicles will not be replaced.

"As part of our partnership with Deutsche Bahn, Lidl and Choice, we have gained valuable insights from the project. In the long term however, the operation of the fleet is economically not viable for us", says Stefan Kampa, Senior Manager Retail, Fleet and Mobility at Mazda Motors (Deutschland) GmbH.

According to the partners, the cooperation contributed to a further strengthening of the sustainable mobility trend carsharing. In particular, the availability of vehicles all over the country could be improved. This also benefited households who are not in the metropolitan area of larger cities.

Deutsche Bahn, Lidl and Choice are currently examining the continuation of an optimized offer, which preserves the advantages of the concept. Existing Mazda Carsharing customers are able to use the nationwide carsharing offers within the Flinkster network of Deutsche Bahn.